


Here's Eglantine, Here's Ivy

by MissjuliaMiriam



Series: Penumbra Smut [9]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Bondage, Consent Play, Dom/sub, Mild/Moderate Fear Kink, Multi, Overstimulation, Pre-negotiated Consent, Subspace, Suspension, Tentacles, Threesome, i'm not a scalie but i'm also not a coward
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-22 09:14:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22713682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissjuliaMiriam/pseuds/MissjuliaMiriam
Summary: Damien wakes up to find that he and his fiancee have been taken captive by a Dastardly Lizard! What an unexpected turn of events! There is absolutely no way that this is going to be extremely pleasurable for everyone involved, no, it's definitely terrifying and bad. No sexy stuff here, not at all. Just captivity. Bondage, you could say. Really scary. I promise.(In which Damien gets a bit tangled up, Rilla doesn't have to do all the work for once, and Arum is very mean on purpose. For fun.)
Relationships: Lord Arum/Sir Damien/Rilla (Penumbra Podcast)
Series: Penumbra Smut [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1143230
Comments: 10
Kudos: 143
Collections: The Annual Penumbra Valentacular Spectacular





	Here's Eglantine, Here's Ivy

**Author's Note:**

> Look I could apologize but I'm just not gonna. Happy Valentacles Day, everyone. I've earned my Not A Coward badge and I'm gonna wear it proudly, though I also lowkey can't believe that 5k of consent play tentacle porn is my first foray into writing SC fic at all, and Bouquet in particular.
> 
> I should probably have put a better summary on this but honestly it's botanical tentacle threesome smut with very few redeeming features other than some fluff at the end so like, just. It's fine. We're being indulgent today.
> 
> For the record, although this fic does involve some degree of consent play, all parties involved in the smut below were involved in a previous negotiation and consented enthusiastically to everything that happens here.
> 
> Title is from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "Beloved, thou hast brought me many flowers". Because I'm a sap (hardy har).

Damien wakes to the wrench of his shoulders as his arms are jerked forcefully above his head, his hands bound tightly together at the wrist; it hurts, though not so badly as some of the injuries he’s had, and certainly nothing is dislocated—whoever’s maneuvering him has been careful enough to avoid that. His eyes snap open, bleary in the low light, but he adjusts in a matter of seconds and finds that sometime in the night he has been transported. Around him there are dark stone walls, rough and natural; a cave rather than a building of any sort, and dangling down through the ceiling are long rootlike growths that twist and writhe, matched by similar tendrils growing up through the floor. Some faint greenish light is being cast by a source he cannot see, and he twists as best he can in his bonds to seek it out, to no avail.

A soft noise draws his attention across the room to a darkened corner, and a line of glowing spots light up along a thicker pillar of plant matter there, enough to illuminate— _Rilla_! Panic flares tight and electric in his chest, and he leans forward unbidden, straining toward his love. She’s kneeling upright, her hair is tangled around her flushed face, and her eyes are wide; like Damien himself, she is bound tightly, her arms behind her back and roots holding her in position on the ground. No matter how she struggles, there’s no give in the bindings on her.

“Rilla!” he cries. Oh, Saints, this is—what is he going to do? Where’s—no, no time for that, he needs to— “Rilla, my love, hold on, I’ll—”

Somewhere behind Damien, there’s a soft rattle that grows louder, _tktktktktk_ , and he remembers. Some of the instinctive fear remains, the fright that comes necessarily from seeing Rilla restrained and looking so very frightened herself, but he remembers now, and he’s able to take a gasping breath.

“Finally, awake, little knight?” comes that sly rattling voice, the hiss at the edge of the words as pronounced as Damien has ever heard, as if the speaker were angry or agitated. “Stop squirming or I’ll _stop_ you.”

Damien redoubles his struggle. He knows the game now, though not the details; he only has to do what comes naturally. “Unhand me, beast!” he shouts. “And release my Rilla this instant!”

The tendrils wrapped around Damian’s wrists pull tighter, stretching him upward until he has to scramble to his feet to prevent his shoulders from being strained. His ankles are free—and then they aren’t, more vines coiling across the floor to wrap around his feet and calves, holding hard so that he’s caught in stillness, stretched between the ceiling and the ground. He strains against the bindings anyway, until he’s panting, sweat cooling on his skin. It’s warm in this little cavern where he’s awoken, so he doesn’t shiver—not from cold, anyway. Fear, anticipation, those are a different story.

When he collapses against the vines, letting them take his weight, there comes an amused hiss from the darkness at his back. “Done struggling, little knight?”

A touch: a sharp claw pressing into his palm (pressing a bell into his palm, and he clenches his fist tightly around it) and dragging down his arm, threatening to slice the delicate skin there and leave him bleeding. That finger disappears, just as another presses into the top of his back and trails down along the line of his spine, scraping against the sensitive skin there, too. Damien arches hard away from it, but the claw follows him, so that he can’t relax. It’s an uncomfortable position, and it feels like only seconds before he’s struggling to maintain it, his breath coming hard. To bolster his strength, he looks to Rilla. She’s watching him, and when he meets her eyes she says, “Just hold on, Damien! We’ll be okay, we’re going to be okay.”

It’s the reassurance he needs to hold on just a little longer. Just a _little_ longer, he tells himself again and again, a litany inside his own head while outside he prays to the Saints, to Saint Damien for his tranquility, that stillness within might grant stillness without. He trembles, holding hard against the bindings on his wrists and ankles, his shoulders and calves straining to keep him bent like a bow lest he fall back onto the razor claws that wait for the lapse of only a moment to dig deep into his skin. He could stay here forever, if only he can hold on _just_ a little longer—

A hiss behind him, and that slight suggestion of claws at his back vanishes. Damien slumps, the breath whooshing out of his lungs like the air out of a bellows, and Rilla says, “Saints, Damien, you’re so strong—thank goodness, you’re okay, come on—”

“Silence!” that reptilian voice at his back snaps. “Or I will silence you.”

As if to clarify the threat, one of the tendrils wrapped around Rilla’s body writhes upward to slide along the bottom of her jaw. She jerks her face up, trying to get away, but can’t stop it from trailing across her lip—and then sliding away again, satisfied for now with her silence. 

“Let us go,” Damien demands, because _he’s_ not the one being threatened with a gag. “Let us go this instant, or you will face my wrath! I am a Knight of the Second Citadel, and I _will_ —mmph!”

No threat needed: the silencing comes without warning, a thick tendril tasting of some mix of dirt and some unknown green herb into his open mouth to stop his words in their path. It presses down against his tongue and teases the back of his throat, enough to make him cough and gag. Damien struggles, tossing his head, but he doesn’t have room enough to dislodge it, and panic crackles in his chest as he struggles to breathe.

“—through your nose, Damien, please, breathe, it’s okay,” comes Rilla’s voice, breaking through the fear into his consciousness, and he drags a hard breath in through his nose, tightens fingers that had begun to loosen around the bell in his palm. “Good, love, hold on, it’s going to be okay.”

Damien makes a muffled noise, and there comes another of those rattling chuckles, before long-fingered hands, rough with scale, come to rest on his shoulders—and then a second set comes to rest at his waist. He tenses, tries to shrug off those alien hands, but the monster at his back only grips on tighter, claws digging into Damien’s collarbone and the soft flesh of his sides. “None of that, honeysuckle,” he hisses. “Stay nice and still for me, and this won’t hurt a bit.”

Damien wants to protest, to point out that his shoulders are already slightly sore and his whole body aching from the tension, but even if he were able to speak he knows there would be no point. He’s utterly at this monster’s mercy. The thought sends a shiver through him, which he tells himself is entirely a reaction to fear and adrenaline, and certainly not anything _else_. But Rilla’s dark eyes are still on him across the room, and there must be _something_ in his face, because she says, “I’m here, Damien. Just go along with what he wants, and maybe he’ll let us go.”

“Mm,” Damien says, but can’t stop himself from twisting instinctively when the hands on his body drift. One stays on his shoulder, fingertips still pressing into the delicate skin at the hollow of collarbone and throat; one rises to cup his neck and his chin; one edges down to cup his hip, intimate as a lover’s touch; and the last slides right down over his pants to press those long fingers into his inner thigh. Everywhere, those razor sharp claws are a present threat, drawing so delicately across sensitive skin, pressing here and there to leave a faint sting or a red mark. Goosebumps rise on Damien’s skin, and he writhes, not sure what to do with himself. 

“Stay still,” the voice behind him says, low and sibilant, and a long tongue flicks out to taste the sweat on his neck. “So sweet, honeysuckle. I think I will taste other parts of you, too, before I am done.”

Damien whimpers very quietly. He’s sure Rilla won’t be able to hear, muffled as his voice is by the vine still holding his teeth apart, but the monster surely does, if his laugh is anything to go by. And then Rilla whimpers, too, and Damien’s attention is torn from the hands on his own body to where his beloved is still kneeling. Distracted by the lizard’s touch, he had missed the shifting of the tendrils holding her, but now several thin vines have found their way beneath her long nightshirt and, if the movement of the fabric is anything to go by, are teasing at her breasts. Another, thicker tendril is wrapped around one of her thighs, its end vanished somewhere beneath the hem of her clothing between her legs.

Damien makes a furious, futile noise through the gag as he realizes what’s happening—he can’t see, doesn’t know the details, but he knows _enough_. He knows that look on Rilla’s face.

“Sshhhh,” the lizard at his back hisses. The hand on his inner thigh slides up, up, and cups him between his legs, long fingers pressing against the fabric of the sleep pants he still wears. It’s an infuriating reminder that he and his fiancee had been stolen out of their bed, a threat, a tease… Damien doesn’t know what to do with the touch, what to think. “Stay very still, honeysuckle. Watch.”

He’s watching. Of course he’s watching, he’s bound in place, unable to do anything else. He doesn’t dare move, not with those claws in… delicate places, his throat not the least of them. His eyes stay fixed on Rilla as she twists against her own bonds, the fabric over her thighs rippling as she begins to rock her hips. He can imagine vividly what must be going on, one of those thick vines pressed between her legs, against her clit, up into the heat of her body. Her face is flushed now, her breath coming harder. “Damien,” she says.

“Mm,” he replies, as loudly as he can.

“Please—”

He can’t, but he makes another sound for her, encouraging—not sure what he’s encouraging. 

“Hm,” says the lizard. “Don’t get too distracted now.” And then the hand cupping him lets go—only to drift up to untie the drawstring holding his pants at his hips. As soon as it’s loose, the hand on his hip tugs his clothing loose, and his pants fall around his ankles, leaving him bare. Rilla’s eyes are wide, looking at him through the gloom even as she shifts against the stimulation beneath her, and Damien looks away. It’s impossible now to deny to himself or to her that he’s aroused, listening to her soft sounds and… and feeling the rush of adrenaline from the threat at his back.

“It’s okay, Damien,” she says. Her voice cracks, just slightly, in the middle of her words. “Don’t be ashamed—I’m here. We’re together.”

He wants very badly to reply, to speak his heart, to let her know what all of this means to him and how desperate he feels but he _can’t_. The lizard has stolen his words. All he can do is squirm against those long fierce hands. One returns to his hip, and the one around his throat tightens slightly… and the last one free wraps around his cock, gripping hard—Saints, for a second so hard it hurts, and that fear from earlier flares through him. The one touching him now has none of Rilla’s human softness and no mercy, just an implacable, monstrous strength. He can’t do anything now to resist, and as the grip around him slackens enough for comfort and his cock is stroked slowly, pleasure lancing through him, he’s suddenly unsure that he _wants_ to resist.

“Good, honeysuckle,” the lizard’s voice hisses in his ear, and his long tongue flicks out again to lick at his cheek. “Are you going to cry for me, before this is over? I think so.”

Damien swallows as best he can around the tendril in his mouth and tries to shake his head. It’s a small movement, but not nothing, and he can see across from him Rilla giving a shaky smile—then she twitches hard, arches, and cries out. The sound is achingly familiar.

A hissed laugh. “Your lady love is enjoying herself, little knight. Relax and maybe you’ll get to do the same.”

The hand around his cock is still moving slowly, steadily, a touch and a tease almost, and Damien assumes for the first second that that’s all that the lizard means. Then he feels the slide of a tendril creeping up from below, winding around his ankle and then his calf and then his knee, like the fastest growing morning glory that Damien has ever seen, except its stalk is ten times the thickness of any morning glory vine that should exist. His legs tense and he tries again in vain to twist away, but it’s fruitless; between the lizard and the vines binding his wrists and ankles, he’s going nowhere, and it only makes the monster laugh again.

“Stay put, honeysuckle,” the monster says, and then as suddenly as they arrived all four of hands on him are gone, though the vines stay. He feels movement at his back, something slinking around him, and the soft crunch of claws digging into the earthen ground beneath them, and then a shadow comes into view beside him. The lizard’s tall, thin form, passing through the darkness just at the end of his vision, making use of the mottled light of the bioluminescence to stay just out of view, a suggestion more than a figure of any surety. He moves toward Rilla, and Damien jerks against the ties that bind him once again.

Nothing he can do is going to stop the lizard, though. He can only watch and _feel_ as the lizard crouches beside Rilla and gathers the fabric of her nightshirt in his hands, and then in a swift jerk, he rends the cloth in two, baring her body to Damien’s gaze. Rilla makes a shocked noise, but in the next second—and Saints, but now he can _see_ it—the vine pressed deep into her body and pressed up against her clit writhes and pulses, drawing another, more pleasured noise from her lips. Then another, a low steady moan as her hips twist and jerk. He’s seen Rilla come a hundred, a _thousand_ times; he knows what it looks like when she’s shoved over the edge on a surprise, and this is certainly that. She’s beautiful as always, even—maybe especially—with the lizard’s hands splayed across her belly and back and thigh. Her back arches, away from or into the touch, into the vine between her legs, pulling against the ones binding her in a kneeling position, and then she relaxes all at once.

“Saints,” she gasps as she comes down, opening hazy eyes. “Mercy, you brute.” The plea is less than sincere; she sounds a bit sardonic. But breathless, even so, her voice roughened by the lingering edge of a moan.

“ _Tktktktktk_. Don’t expect easy mercy from me, girl. You’re not going anywhere yet.” The lizard turns his head then and fixes one of those eyes, violet and shining in the dark, on Damien. “You’re going to sit here with me and watch me break your knight, I think.”

Damien sees Rilla swallow and then twitch almost violently; there’s a soft, slick noise, and a tendril between her legs slides free and across her thigh, leaving a wet trail of her own liquids on her skin. Damien wants—he can almost _smell_ it, can imagine it so clearly that he feels as though closing his eyes and thinking it hard enough would be enough to set him free so that he might press his face there and soak her in. But imagination is less than reality, and the reality is that the vines around his wrists go even tighter, pulling him up, and the ones at his ankles twine higher, up around his thighs, spreading his legs and holding so fast that he can barely move at all, steady and still as that vine he’d earlier felt climbing his leg wraps higher still to replace the lizard’s hand around his cock. It coils around his hardness like a spring and squeezes, unlike fingers in every way but _Saints_ is it overwhelming, pleasure almost like pain flaring hot in his belly.

“Damien—” Rilla begins, and then a muffled protest as the lizard places his remaining free hand over her mouth.

“No more of that,” the lizard hisses, low and menacing. “You’ll not comfort him now. He’ll endure on his own… or not.”

The monster really does mean to break him, Damien realizes. He, that creature crouched there with his hands on Damien’s love, _will_ see Damien shaking and tearful before this is over. The inevitability of it strikes him, and he wonders—should he surrender now? Or will the fall only be painful if he does? Will the lizard have more mercy if he gives him a show first? It’s impossible to know. He only has his instincts to serve him now.

His instincts, as they always do, tell him to _fight_ , and so he does, struggling to hold himself tense and hold back against the stimulation of the tendril stroking and squeezing his cock. Another, thicker vine descends from above and wraps around his chest just above the bottom of his ribs, and a two more around his shoulders and back—it immobilizes him further, which feels redundant until suddenly those firm bonds _lift_ and he’s no longer standing but held in place, he’s suspended, unable to move himself. He’s completely at the whim of the monster and this organic contraption that he’s devised, held captive, his body vulnerable to manipulation in whatever way pleases the lizard most.

By the sound of the hiss he hears from below him, his helplessness is _greatly_ pleasing, and Damien shudders. His eyes, he realizes, have sunk closed, and he fights against pleasure and fear to open them again and find his—his adversary. The lizard is looking back, that same violet sure and constant; the lizard’s face is pressed close to Rilla’s as they both watch him. The sight sends another shiver down his spine, and his hips jerk against the vine wrapped around him; in response, it squeezes a little tighter, and he moans around the tendril still filling his mouth. He could bite down, he realizes; the plant fibre feels firm enough against his tongue that he doubts he could bite through it. But no—that he can save for later, for when he _needs_ something to push against. For now, he closes his eyes and, silent, begs for Saint Damien’s tranquility to hold him in good stead as slowly pleasure takes him over.

The pressure of the vines holding him up is—good, it’s good, he can’t deny that any longer, but it’s less than the feeling of the vine still wound around his cock and so he focuses on that, struggling not to get lost. The lizard wants to break him, he reminds himself. But he can, _will_ hold on for as long as his endurance lasts. He’s done it before; he knows he can win against his own weakness in this sort of situation. He doesn’t need to give in to temptation, not now.

 _“Tktktktk_ ,” from below him, and then claws bite into the flesh of his thigh, hard enough to sting.

Damien jerks, whimpers, and feels his grasp on control slip slightly. 

“Do you like that, honeysuckle?” the lizard’s voice is strained, ever so slightly. “Are you on the edge? Close to giving in?”

Damien shakes his head. No, no, he’s still—he’s still holding on. Still present.

“Hmm. Perhaps…” That speculative tone means danger. 

Around him, vines tighten and shift, tugging at Damien’s limbs and moving his body this way and that. The vine around his cock stills in its incessant stroking and slides away, and he can’t hold back a soft noise of disappointment—the lizard laughs and then Damien’s legs are pulled apart and his body shifted, tilted, so that he’s closer to Rilla and bent forward slightly. Exposed.

A clawed hand trails over his ass, cupping one of the cheeks and spreading him, opening his body to that violet gaze. Damien shakes, held in place, and with eyes and muffled noise begs Rilla for help, though he knows there’s little she can do now. She’s tied still too, and riding a vine tendril again, her body shifting, working herself on it as she watches him—Saints, the flush and shine of her skin in the shadow, lit so dimly and so beautifully, he could watch her forever. The way her eyes have gone dark with desire for him and the arch of her throat as she moans. She doesn’t speak, though her mouth is open; she’s lost to pleasure as he is surely about to be. No help for either of them, now.

A slap on his ass draws his attention firmly back to the moment, to the other participant in this situation. “Don’t you dare forget who’s in charge here, honeysuckle,” the lizard says. “Now be a good little knight and relax, or I won’t hesitate to make this hurt.”

Damien’s head droops, breaking his view of Rilla. He can’t tell if it’s an empty threat, too far gone already to read the lizard’s tone, and he can’t risk it—he knows she doesn’t like seeing him hurt. So when he feels the press of another of those vines, this one fortunately quite thin and slick with some unknown substance, press against his entrance, he tries to relax.

The vine, cool and foreign, slips easily into Damien’s body, as easily as if it were meant for such a thing—or as if he were. The lizard certainly seems to approve, stepping closer, in between his legs so that Damien can feel the press of scales against his inner thighs, and trails his hand over Damien’s ass again. “Good,” he hisses. “So you can follow orders, little knight.”

Yes, Damien can follow orders. He can relax, and it’s a good thing, too, because the tendril pressing into him is growing thicker as it goes, until the stretch is just on this side of uncomfortable, the sensation overriding all else as he adjusts to the intrusion. It’s slick and easy, yes, and he—he _wants_ it. He feels full in the best way. But it’s so _much_ , and he knows it must be showing on his face, because when he lifts his head to check on Rilla she’s watching him with the enraptured look she gets when she’s fucking him. She mouths his name, and then nods, and he lets his head fall again and closes his eyes. He doesn’t need to fight any more.

A good thing, too. The lizard’s hands find his skin as the vine begins to fuck him, one coming to stroke his cock, one squeezing his ass, one digging claws into his thigh—his body clenches at that, and it only makes the fullness all the more overwhelming—and the last rubbing down his back in a way that makes his skin tingle, firm but gentle. The hand around his cock is a counterpoint to the soft hand on his back and the harsh one on his thigh and the unrelenting twisting, thrusting vine in his body and—Saints, all the sensations overlapping, each different and he can’t but react to one when the next sweeps into his awareness again. He feels tossed on the sea, like he’s drowning, and it’s so good. It’s so much.

Damien does what he can to hold on, to ride the waves as they come, to block out everything but his body—he can control his body, he _can_. Then he hears Rilla say, “Damien, it’s okay,” and in an _instant_ he’s on the brink, the instinct to fight vanishing like mist. She’s there. _He’s_ there. And his whole being is screaming for release, to be let go. He arches against the vines holding him, shoulders and back and thighs straining, and he whines around the gag. Behind him, pressed now against his thighs—he can feel the lizard’s twinned cocks, slick with internal lubricant and warm compared to his cool smooth scales—the lizard says, “Let go, honeysuckle. I have you.”

 _He does_. Damien can fall; he’s already been caught. Held. So he falls, tumbles; he lets himself break. It feels—it feels. He has no words. 

He comes down very slowly, or so it feels, drifting like a feather back into his body, still suspended but limp now. He’s hanging heavy above the ground but held as if it’s nothing. The two still standing on the earth below him are strong enough to hold him up. 

Rilla, he realizes, is making soothing noises, and he can feel familiar fingers twined into his hair. The vines must have released her, though he’s still held fast; he thinks maybe he remembers hearing the sound of her falling over the edge herself, sometime while he was out to sea. 

The vine in his ass, gone still as he came, twitches and then withdraws as smoothly and easily as it pressed in; the one in his mouth pulls out as well, and Damien gasps.

“I’m going to fuck you now, honeysuckle,” Arum says in a conversational tone.

“Maybe—” Rilla begins, but is cut off. Damien can’t see behind him, assumes Arum must have shaken his head or made a gesture.

“I promised to make the little knight cry,” he croons, a hiss still hiding at the edges of his voice, half-feral but still in control. “I keep my promises, Rilla.”

“Alright,” she says, and cups Damien’s jaw as Arum presses inexorably forward. He’s not sure, at first—his body is still trembling and hot and sensitive and so every touch feels doubled, so he doesn’t realize at first that Arum is pressing both cocks into him together—they’re slim but both is still _so. much_. 

Damien whines, his words still missing, lost in the ocean he’d been plunged into, and Rilla shushes him, kisses the corner of his mouth. “Be good,” she reminds him, and he does, he is, he holds still and tries to relax. Arum fills him so well, more and more than the vine that had fucked him before, hotter and softer and sharper by turns. Claws dig into his hips and his waist and his thigh, and he cries out weakly, tries to—he doesn’t know if he’s trying to press closer or get away from the overstimulation of being fucked so thoroughly so soon after coming. Arum is ever one for slow and deliberate, driving Damien up and up and up, like climbing a high hill. He can feel, very distantly, Rilla’s thumbs smoothing away the tears on his cheeks. He’s still bound and hanging in the air; there’s nothing he can do but take it, feel it as one of Arum’s cocks presses against his prostate. It _hurts_ , it’s so good, so terrible, so…

No words. He feels Arum’s thrusts go jerky, hard, _harder_ , too rough and just right, and then he presses in _so_ deep and goes very, very still. Predator-still, and heat floods through Damien. He comes too, an impossible peak of sensation that shouldn’t work, doesn’t. Everything fades but feeling, and he thinks he blacks out.

When he comes back this time, he’s been let down, lying on the ground—surprisingly soft and loamy, no wonder Rilla hadn’t minded kneeling there for so long—and Rilla is curled up against his chest, one of his arms draped over her. Arum is at his back, sliding a soft cloth over his skin to wipe away sweat and come. 

“Mm,” he says.

Rilla wriggles around in his arms until she can see his face and reaches up to pat it gently, a little loose in her movements—tired and sated. “Back with us, Damien?”

“Yes,” he tries. His voice is hoarse. “Hello.”

She giggles a little. “Not all the way back, huh? It’s okay. Just be here with us for a bit.”

That sounds good. He subsides into quiet, letting Arum maneuver his limbs—with his hands, this time—to finish cleaning him up, and then when his taller lover slides in behind him he leans back to press against him.

“You did very well, honeysuckle,” Arum says, pressing his snout against Damien’s neck in his version of a kiss. “I hope it was good for you.”

Damien makes an agreeing noise. “Very,” he says. “I was surprised. It was good.” There are better words than good; he digs around in his brain for a moment and then produces, “Stupendous, in fact.”

“There he is,” Rilla says, and leans up to press a kiss to Damien’s jaw. “You don’t have to talk, Damien, if you don’t want.”

He does and he doesn’t. “I… I must speak my heart,” he says. “But maybe… later?”

“Whenever you need,” Arum says. He’s got a bit of a rattle in his chest that makes Damien think he’s tired out too. Then again, he’d kidnapped them out of their bed and taken them… somewhere. He looks around again, but the bioluminescence has dimmed even further. It’s probably an underground chamber somewhere in the swamp, but honestly he can’t be entirely sure. It doesn’t matter; he’s wrapped up warm between his two loves. He’s safe.

“Any time, Damien,” Rilla agrees. “Now come on, sleep for a little while and then we can get up and debrief, alright?”

“Alright,” Damien murmurs. Debrief means Damien having time to talk through his feelings while he and Rilla and Arum share an enormous hot bath, and then he brushes out Rilla’s hair and Arum braids it, and they usually share a simple meal. It’s his favourite thing. He presses his back a little more firmly against Arum’s chest, and Arum takes the hint and wraps two arms firmly around Damien’s body. Rilla snuggles closer. Damien sighs, content.

**Author's Note:**

> @flippingnazguls on Twitter if you want to shame me publicly, but it probably won't work. I have no shame. Better just leave a comment instead.


End file.
